Creator of VeggieTales repents

"I looked back at the previous 10 years and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality. . . .

And that was such a huge shift for me from the American Christian ideal. We’re drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore. Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god.

- Phil Vischer, Creator of the now bankrupt VeggieTales, from an interview with WorldMag

Geese Rush Hour

Why Dungeons & Dragons is banned by the Catholic Church

via SMBC

Farewell to Friday Night Lights

FNL has pulled this off by sticking to one byword: respect. Dillon has unemployment, drugs and strip clubs, but it's also a town where teenagers still say "ma'am" and "sir." Coach Taylor is respect personified. Unlike Don Draper, he's a hero, not an antihero; Chandler gives him a soft-spoken honor that today's serious drama rarely depicts. And he gives respect back, teaching his players the strength that comes from unironic devotion, captured in the motto "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose."

Though they can, of course. Sometimes teams lose, families lose, towns lose. What saves them is teamwork, which goes beyond the sidelines. FNL is a football show, but one in which what matters above all is not the Hail Mary pass but the faces in the stands watching its arc. "When you go back out on the field," Taylor tells his team as they trail in a big game at halftime, "those are the people I want in your minds. Those are the people I want in your hearts."

Just as HBO's crime-drama masterpiece The Wire was a searing vision of what is wrong with America, Friday Night Lights has been a clear-eyed, full-hearted tribute to what is right with it. Whether you're urban or rural, red or blue or purple, this show was made for you and me.

- Times Review on Friday Night Lights

The Foundation of Unyielding Despair - Bertrand Russell

"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspirations, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of the universe in ruins-all these things, if not beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."

- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, essayist and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy

How then does Bertrand Russell define the words that he uses?

YEY! Windows 95!!

The relationship between markets and morality- Os Guinness

What, then, is the relationship between markets and morality?

Unless capitalism has an ethical boundary, it will always create two problems. One is the problem of insatiability, never knowing when to stop, always wanting just a little more. The other problem—you can see this very clearly in America today—is commodification. The good society draws a line between what is and what is not for sale, but, in modern America, almost everything is up for sale, including much that should not be. We need powerful faith with strong ethics and knowledge of what is legitimate to buy and sell—that’s the market at its best—but certain things are not for buying and not for selling, and we should know why.

- Os Guinness, the great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness (founder of the Guinness brewery)